More than half of Australia's mobile phone users have used content on their mobile phone created by others, while one third are regularly sharing the content they create, according to the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index.

Yeah, I know, another day another survey. Sorry, another "Index" - it sounds more trustworthy than a survey, doesn't it? Still, it's interesting to see that people are starting to use their phones to their full potential.

Other surveys have shown that many Australians are afraid to use their phone's data-centric features for fear of hefty bills. The current mobile data price war should see that start to change, although for now MMS and Bluetooth are still the preferred options for transferring content.

Published by the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), the fourth annual Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index is compiled from an online survey of 2097 consumers nationally with the average age of approximately 35. The fact that the survey was done online obviously skews the results towards the tech-savvy.

According to the results, of the third of mobile phone users regularly sharing content they create, 96 per cent share photos, 41 per cent share videos and 32 per cent share music - with MMS and Bluetooth being the most popular sharing platforms.

Turning to commercially produced content, over the last 12 months, the top three types of content purchased by consumers were:

· Games (43%)
· True tones (42%)
· Wallpapers (33%)

Over the last year, the Index also reveals a rapidly growing thirst for information services that goes beyond news, weather and sport;

· Demand for maps (location services) has increased by 347%
· Demand for lifestyle information such as restaurant/cafe guides and reviews is up 174%
· Demand for TV Listings is up 93%

The Gadgets on the Go Lifestyle Index (based on a survey of one thirty-something blogger) reveals similar trends when it comes to information services, although not when it comes to buying junk like ringtones and wallpapers. How does the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index compare to your mobile usage habits?

Telstra needs to do a lot more price slashing to match the competition.

As of this week Telstra has cut its wireless broadband pricing by around 25 per cent. BigPond's 400MB wireless broadband plan now costs $39.95 per month, 1GB costs $59.95 per month and 3GB costs $89.95 per month. There's also a new 10GB plan which costs $129.95 per month. The new plans are also available to Next G Telstra Business customers as of September 5.

The new plans show Telstra is obviously feeling the heat in the mobile data war, but the plans are really just a token effort to retain those customers tempted to defect.

Right now Vodafone and Optus will sell you 1GB for $35 per month, or less if you're also a voice customer. Wander over to the 3 shop and you'll get the same deal for $20 per month (again, less if you're a voice customer). 3 offers better value for power users as well, offering 7GB for $49, whereas Vodafone and Optus only offer 5GB for the same price.

Compared to these deals, Telstra's plans still look pretty shabby. Telstra might want to brag about breaking the 10GB barrier for consumer plans, but at $129.95 per month, who cares? Telstra is also offering half price access for 12 months if you sign up for three years and have another Telstra service such as a landline with both local and long distance, a Telstra mobile or a Telstra landline broadband service. Considering we're in the middle of a wireless data war, you'd have to be an idiot to lock yourself into Telstra for three years.

In the next year or so Optus and Vodafone will almost match Telstra in terms of HSDPA coverage, as will 3 (albeit with Telstra's help). Once it no longer holds the upper hand when it comes to coverage, Telstra will try to use its faster network speeds to justify its hefty pricing. To be honest, I don't think your average punter cares about the difference between 7, 14 and 21 Mbps when it comes to mobile devices. Telstra will be forced to slash its mobile data pricing even further.

Will the new mobile broadband pricing convince you to switch to Telstra, or stop you switching away from Telstra?

3 is expanding its Australian wireless coverage and has struck a roaming agreement with Telstra's Next G.

Hutchison's metro-only 3 network has long offered Australia's best value mobile data plans, but it's been hamstrung by its limited range - roaming on to Telstra's slower networks outside the cities. Now all this is set to change.

3's HSDPA Broadband Zone covers metropolitan Sydney, Melbourne & Geelong, Brisbane & Gold Coast, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra. Under expansion plans this will soon stretch to Newcastle and the Central Coast in NSW as well as the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. Around 50 sites will be added by the end of the year. As someone who only signed up for Vodafone's sluggish HSDPA network because of its coverage on the coast, this is welcome news and probably enough for me to switch to 3 when my Vodafone mobile broadband contract runs out. Roaming onto Next G is just the icing on the cake.

I've used Vodafone's wireless broadband service across various parts of Melbourne and Sydney and I've rarely seen it deliver the advertised speeds, even in places where Next G and 3 fly. The fact I mostly use Vodafone within 3's Broadband Zone just adds to the frustration.

My mobile phone is with Next G for similar reasons, I wanted the national coverage but I'm paying through the nose for it. I stayed away from 3 because I didn't want to pay the outrageous $1.65 per MB roaming charges when I needed to fall back on Telstra, particularly as I'd only be getting GPRS-like speeds. Once again, most of the time I'm using my Next G phone for data when I'm standing within 3's Broadband Zone. Once the Broadband Zone is extended along the coast, and I can roam onto Next G in an emergency, there's no need to keep my mobile phone with Telstra.

These changes will finally make 3 a viable choice for many people. Lets just hope the network has the capacity to cope with the demands of the new customers. Failing to deliver on promises due to inadequate capacity seems to be an all too common story among Australian wireless broadband providers.

When the contract runs out on my Next G SIM card in January I'll probably look for the best deal on an iPhone 3G. With the upcoming changes, 3 looks like the perfect iPhone 3G network. If I can get something like NetShare running on the iPhone 3G I won't even need a separate USB modem for my notebook and I can ditch Vodafone. 3's iPhone Starter Kit is certainly better value than Telstra's offerings, but I still haven't given up hope of 3 selling the iPhone 3G by Christmas.

The mobile broadband war is hotting up and it looks like 3 may have struck the killer blow. Are the changes enough to win your business?

Optus claims this "industry first product" gives customers control over their wireless broadband, but customers gets screwed so badly that it seems Optus is the one in control.

The minimum recharge on Optus' pre-paid wireless broadband offering is $30, which gets you 2GB, but this credit is only good for 30 days. The $40/3GB and $50/5GB recharges also only last 30 days, while the $70/6GB and $100/9GB recharges last 60 days. So in other words, using Optus' pre-paid wireless broadband is going to cost you at least $30 a month. That sounds about as bad as a contract to me.

Yes, pre-paid gives Optus users the freedom to walk away at any time. The fact they need to cough $199 upfront for the USB modem means they're unlikely to do so. The only customers who would benefit from pre-paid are those who would go for more than a month at a time without using the service, and therefore not need to top up every month.

When I went to Optus to confirm all this, I was told there's actually a "$10 Fast Credit plan" that charges you $1.02 per 10MB - even though there's no mention of this on the Pre-Paid Wireless Rates page (or at least there wasn't at the time of writing, but it might have been added by the time you read this). That works out at more than $100 per GB, but at least it would let pre-paid users have emergency access for only $10 per month. Well at least it would, if not for the fact that Fast Credit only lasts for *seven* days!

It gets worse when you read the pre-paid fine print; "The first 30MB of usage each day will only be charged at 10MB. After this, usage will be charged in 10MB increments or part thereof and will include both uploads and downloads".

What this means is that once you've used 30MB in a day, each time you re-connect to the internet it will cost you 10MB per session, even if you just used a few KB checking your mail. If you suffered regular dropouts, it could become a very expensive problem.

An Optus spokesman told me over the phone that Optus had decided to round up to "make things easier" for customers. Exactly how this is good for customers I'm not sure, but you'd chew through your 2GB pretty quickly this way without actually using that much data - which sounds good for Optus.

Apparently the first 30MB you use each day is not counted towards your monthly limit, but of course you still need to have pre-paid for credits to access this "free" data. Optus' generosity is overwhelming.

How ever you look at it, Optus' pre-paid plans are shockers. 3 offers $29 p/m for 2GB on a 24 month contract, with a free modem and none of this 10MB billing increment garbage. Vodafone's entry level plan isn't as good - offering 1GB for $35 p/m (which includes $5 p/m for the modem) - but it's still cheaper than Optus when you allow for the fact Optus charges $199 for the modem. Most people looking for cheap wireless broadband would be better off on a plan from 3 or Vodafone, rather than Optus' pathetic pre-paid plans.

It's little wonder people are abandoning home phones after the ordeal I've been through with Optus and Telstra.

It all started about a month ago when I arranged to move my home phone number from Optus to Telstra, in preparation for moving house.

Transferring from Optus to Telstra before the move was supposed to make it easy to transfer the number from my old house to my new house in the next suburb. The farce that followed drove me to the point of tears more than once.

Months ago I spent at least an hour on the phone with Telstra sorting out the move to my new house. I was told the new house had three lines. I could transfer my existing home number from Optus to Telstra and then across to the new house, but I couldn't transfer my work number to the new house. Telstra allocated me a new work number and we set transfer dates along with which number would connect up to which line.

The week before the home number was due to switch back to Telstra, I rang Optus to ensure everything was in order. Instead of waiting a week, Optus proceeded to cut my phone off my home phone that same day. When I rang Optus to complain, I was told Telstra was to blame because it had started the porting process too soon. I rang Telstra, which naturally said it was Optus' fault as it hadn't touched my line yet.

To make a long story not quite so long, I spent more than five of the next 24 hours on the phone with Optus and Telstra trying to sort out this mess - each of them blaming the other while I was left with no home phone. After a while it became clear that Optus was to blame and I was told to speak to the porting department, and then told the porting department doesn't speak to people. Every person I spoke to kept insisting it was Telstra to blame.

Eventually I got through to an Optus lady who sounded like she was in an Indian call centre. She was a little difficult to understand but extremely helpful and, unlike everyone else, didn't instantly lay the blame with Telstra. She looked at the system and within a few minutes saw the problem was that Optus had disconnected me at the exchange. She said she'd look into it and - five minutes later - she rang back on the home phone. All it took to fix the problem was five minutes and an open mind to the idea that Optus might actually be at fault.

I rang back Optus to make the mother of all complaints and to praise the Indian lady who fixed the problem. Just as I'm about to end that call the line goes dead. Optus had cut me off again! When I rang back, Optus once more tried to tell me it was Telstra's fault. At this point I lost it. "How can it be Telstra's fault when Optus fixed the problem 30 minutes ago? You fixed it once, bloody fix it again!" I'm told there's nothing they could do and that someone will call me later in the day.

About an hour later I decide to ring Optus again. This time I went through to an Indian again and, within five minutes, the problem was fixed and my home line was working again. He said the order to disconnect my number hadn't been removed, so the system kept cutting me off. I think the way he resolved it was to completely delete the order to move to Telstra. Later that day I got a call from Optus telling me they were still working on the problem, and I gave the lady a long lecture about how the Indians kept fixing the problem while all the locals want to do was blame Telstra.

Unfortunately that's just Act I of this comedy/drama. When the day came for my home phone to switch to Telstra, Optus didn't disconnect the line (probably because the second Indian cancelled the order to stop Optus cutting off my phone). I was left in a situation where people calling me from an Optus phone would ring through to the Optus socket in the wall, whereas people ringing from a Telstra phone would ring through to the Telstra socket in the wall. This lasted about 36 hours.

I always knew Optus and Telstra's customer service was terrible, but this experience left me convinced Optus was the worst of the two. Little did I know Telstra still had a few tricks up its sleeve.

The home number was supposed to switch on at my new house on Friday August 8, the day I picked up the keys. Then I was going to ring Internode to arrange a DSL service. I noticed that afternoon that the phones were still dead, but I was too busy to do anything about it and I didn't get a chance to ring Telstra until last Wednesday - all this time without broadband or a home phone and struggling to make do on a sometimes flaky Vodafone wireless broadband connection.

When I finally rang Telstra they had no idea what I was talking about. The paperwork was lost and all the time I'd spent on the phone with Telstra arranging the move was for nothing. So we started again. Now I was told I couldn't keep my home number, but I demanded the lady look again because I'd been previously told I could. She put me on hold again and came back to say I could keep the old number and it would be connected up later that day. Then we would sort out the other lines running into the house.

The phone still wasn't working that evening so I rang Telstra again - to be told the transfer was on hold because I couldn't keep my old number. Another few minutes on hold. Another promise that I could keep my number. Another day passed and I still had no home phone or broadband. By now I was starting to lose my angry.

Another call to Telstra confirmed that I definitely couldn't keep my old home number. Then I was told that there was only one line into my new house, when I'd previously been told there was three. Of course it was difficult to test because Telstra hadn't connected up any numbers to my house yet.

It soon became obvious that Telstra was viewing my house and my new next-door neighbour as one house, and two of the lines supposedly running into my house actually belonged to my neighbour. This seemed strange because Mrs Neighbour had already told me she didn't have a home phone (which was starting to look like a good idea). In the end I was forced to knock on her door at dinner time with my mobile in one hand (talking to Telstra) and a spare phone in the other. We found the unused phone socket in her study and discovered a phone service Mrs Neighbour didn't even know she had - apparently some business is still paying the bill. It seems she has a second line in there somewhere as well, which is inactive.

I had wanted the second line for incoming work calls, but I wasn't prepared to pay the $299 Telstra now wanted to connect up a second copper line so I've decided to try VoIP again - this time provided by Internode so hopefully it will be more reliable for incoming calls than the other consumer-grade VoIP services I've tried.

I thought this was the end of it but, the next day, I still didn't have a home phone. After yet another call to Telstra on Friday, I was told there might be a fault on the line and I'd have to wait until Monday afternoon (today) for a technician to come out and inspect things. I was also told there was a chance I might only be able to connect to the Telstra cable network, and not copper, which made me extremely unhappy to say the least.

After speaking to someone else at Telstra I discovered that the previous owner of the house had put a hold on his old number, which was tying up my service. Apparently nothing could be done until that number was transferred to the previous owner's new house late Monday (today) - after the technician was due to visit. At this point I completely lost it again, demanding to know why it had taken Telstra so long to figure this out. Of course they didn't have a good answer, but it looked like I'd have to wait until Monday evening to get things sorted.

Saturday morning I picked up the phone and discovered dial tone. Even though Telstra told me it was impossible. Unbelievable.

Another call to Telstra this morning confirmed that, yes, the phone was working and, no, they had no idea why because it was still marked as pending in the system. In other words, just like Optus, they have No Frickin Idea what's happening with their own network.

Now I have to ring Internode and arrange DSL. To be honest I'm expecting Telstra to screw things up again and insist the line isn't suitable for DSL, even though I know the previous owner had a BigPond DSL service.

So that's my tale of telecommunications woe, and somehow I doubt it's over. I've spent more than two weeks of the last month without a home phone and I'll starting to realise just how easy it is to survive without one. Thanks to Telstra's incompetence I'm going to use VoIP for my work phone and, if the Internode VoIP service is good, I might do the same for my home phone.

Tell me about your telco horror stories. Were they enough for you to abandon your phone completely?

IceTV.com.au provides a seven-day Electronic Program Guide so your Personal Video Recorder can check the guide each day and automatically record your favourite shows. It works with computer-based media centres, along with a handful of off-the-shelf PVRs such as those from Beyonwiz and Topfield. IceTV has been developing a range of remote scheduling and social networking features for quite some time - in anticipation of TiVo's release in Australia.

IceTV can give your PVR TiVo-like powers and now the iPhone app lets you access them from anywhere.

The IceTV app is free, but an IceTV subscription costs $99 per year. We put the app to the test on our first-gen iPhone running 2.0, combined with our Vista media centre. The interface looks similar to the IceTV desktop widget (available for Windows and Mac) and does basically the same job. When launched it shows you what's on TV right now and you can flick through what's on for the next few hours. You can also call up a calendar and scroll to the day and time you want to view (using the same rolling interface used to set calendar appointments). You can also call up a search window to look for programs by name.

When you find the show you want, you can just tap on it to record it and the interface marks programs already scheduled for recording. In my tests, schedule changes on the iPhone or the media centre appeared on the other device within a few minutes.

The app's Upcoming option strips back the TV guide to just show what you're recording this week, while the My Shows feature lets you check and edit your list of regularly scheduled recordings. Once you've scheduled a regular recording, IceTV keeps track of it so you don't miss it even if it goes off the air and then pops up again months later in the middle of the night (like the awesome Penn & Teller:BS which appears to be on next Wednesday night in the graveyard slot).

IceTV is also jumping on the Web 2.0 social networking bandwagon with a Popular feature that lets you see which shows other IceTV users are recording -- right now Dr Who is in top spot, which gives you an good idea of the target demographic. The app can even recommend upcoming shows based on your recording habits and for some reason it's convinced I'd like Scrapheap Challenge.

If you're a couch potato away from your couch, IceTV's iPhone app puts a virtual remote control at your fingertips. What other features would you like to see added?

Optus' new Wireless Yes Fusion deal provides your home internet and telephone service over Optus' wireless broadband network, offering the same bundling deal available to customers on Optus cable. For $79 per month you get unlimited local and national calls, plus unlimited calls to Optus mobiles. You also get 2GB of data but, like Optus' other shifty Fusion plans, you're hit with a $300 excess data charge before your bandwidth is throttled.

I know only yesterday I was extolling the virtues of living in a wireless wonderland, as I'm currently livin' la vida wireless as I wait for the phones and DSL to come online on my new house. Even so, I'd be reluctant to trust my home phone to Optus' wireless plans after the terrible reports I've heard about Virgin's Broadband at Home - which runs on the same wireless network.

A friend of mine is about to embark on a fight with Virgin for a refund, he's so unhappy with the drop outs and call quality on Virgin's Broadband at Home - which gives him unlimited local and national calls, unlimited calls to Virgin mobiles and 2GB of monthly data. From the reports I read at sites like Whirlpool, he's not alone in complaining about the service - even customers with a strong signal strength still experience regular call dropouts.

I have to say I'm not surprised. There are two kinds of telecommunications service providers in this country. The first are those interested in providing a quality service to power users. The second are those looking to lure in newbies with flashy advertising and deals that seem too good to be true, only to sucker punch them with poor connections, horrific charges and woeful customer service. Many ISPs don't have the capacity to back the services, especially when it comes to wireless, so the more people who sign up the worse the service gets.

Telstra has always made its money from screwing people who don't know any better and Optus is heading down the same path. From the complaints, I'd say Virgin Broadband falls under the same category.

Wireless telecommunications should be your last resort, as your home phone is supposed to be the one thing that still works when everything else goes pear-shaped. I certainly wouldn't risk signing up for Optus or Virgin's wireless home phone deals.

I've been without a home phone and cable/DSL for almost a week and I've barely noticed.

I've spent the last five days moving house, swapping my 13 inch MacBook for a 3 tonne truck - certainly a shock to the system for a professional nerd. I expected the severing of my landline communications to also come as a shock, but wireless technologies stepped in to save the day.

The phones at the new house were meant to come on last Friday when I picked up the keys but, as usual, something went pear-shapped. I haven't had time to fight with Telstra about it but, the longer it has dragged on, the more I realise how easy it is to survive on wireless rations.

My new house doesn't have access to Optus cable, so I'm intending to sign up with Internode DSL instead. Of course I was waiting for my new phone number to come online before putting the call through to Internode. Even if the phones had come on as planned, I knew I'd be at least a few days without broadband, so I got my hands on a D-Link DIR-451 3G mobile router.

The DIR-451 is a four-port wireless router that also lets you connect to a mobile phone network to access UMTS and HSDPA wireless broadband. The first generation of such routers only featured PCMCIA card slots for connecting wireless broadband adaptors. D-Link's new DIR-451 features a PCMCIA slot as well as a USB port for using USB wireless broadband modems, allowing you to take advantage of the cheap mobile broadband deals. I combined it with my Huawei E220 ''soap on a rope'' USB modem from Vodafone, which comes with 5 GB per month for $39.

At the moment my home network is completely wireless and linked wirelessly to the outside world. The DIR-451 has performed admirably, although the Vodafone connection has been a little flaky and I've never seen it provide anything close to HSDPA-like speeds. I'd probably look for a different wireless ISP if it were to be a longer term solution. If you only had light internet needs, a DIR-451 combined with a cheap USB wireless broadband modem would make a lot more sense than entry level cable or DSL.

As for the home phone, I haven't missed it at all. The only people that call my home number are my mother and mother-in-law, and even they are starting to embrace the internet age. Everyone else contacts us via email, SMS or mobile. Like many people, I'm seriously starting to wonder if it's worth paying for a home phone. The mobile is fine for making outgoing calls, although I think it's a bit rude to expect people to pay mobile rates if they need to talk to me.

The obvious phone solution is VoIP, but previously I've found consumer VoIP isn't reliable enough for incoming calls. I suspect this would be even more of a problem over a wireless link, as would the lack of Quality of Service.

I admit I like having a physical phone line to fall back on. For the last few years I've had a Telstra line for incoming work calls, but made my outgoing calls via VoIP (which means I can switch between VoIP providers without changing phone number). I think I'll start doing the same with my home phone as well. I'll start with Internode's VoIP service for outgoing calls and see how it goes.

My wireless week has shown me that I can survive without wires but I don't think I'm quite ready to take the plunge yet. Do you live in a wireless only world? How are you finding it?

A disturbing number of people confess to talking on a mobile phone during sex.

In a UK-wide survey by iGizmo, just over one per cent of people admit to talking on their phone whilst "on the job". One per cent doesn't sound like a lot, but it really is one per cent too many. On top of that, two per cent confess to talking on their phone during a funeral, whilst more than a third have chatted on a mobile whilst sitting on the bog at work, at home or in a public dunny.

The survey looked into the gadget usage habits of nearly 10,000 male and female consumers aged 16 to 45. I think the most disturbing thing about these results is that they probably won't come as much of a shock to most people.

Considering your phone is constantly by your side, people answering calls in the dunny shouldn't come as a surprise. Talking at a funeral is poor form, but even if you don't have respect for the dead you think you'd at least have respect for the living - especially when you're in the middle of shagging them.

It must be a pretty dud root if you'd rather answer a call rather than let it go through to voicemail and I wouldn't hold out much hope for the relationship. If you're waiting on a call that's really *that* important, maybe you should have kept your pants on a little longer.

It's pretty clear that people are obsessed with being connected and have their priorities out of whack. According to the survey, a mobile phone and an MP3 player are ranked higher on the list of priorities than beer, wine, spirits and smoking. Under 24s value socialising and their mobile second only to their family, whereas nearly nine per cent of under 16s view their mobile phone as more important than their health and their family.

Even allowing for possibly dodgy survey methodology, these results are a worry. What does it take for you to let a call go through to voicemail or, heaven forbid, turn off your mobile phone?

The new iPhone 2.0 software runs so painfully slow on my first-gen iPhone, I'm considering downgrading back to 1.x.

After rushing out to upgrade my first-gen iPhone as soon as the iPhone Dev Team delivered the goods, I'm starting to think it might have been a mistake.

The upgrade from 1.1.4 to 2.0 has left my iPhone sluggish and buggy - apps can take a few seconds to launch and sometimes the phone even hangs for a while before regaining its senses.

When I launch the camera, for example, it can take more than five seconds for the onscreen shutter to open. When you've got young kids, the Kodak moment can be lost with even a five second delay. Sometime just unlocking the screen seems to takes an eternity.

Upgrading to 2.0 gave me access to the iPhone Apps Store, but so far I've seen very little there to get excited about. When someone finally did release a decent app, Nullriver's NetShare to allow tethering, Apple pulled it down after a few hours - probably to appease AT&T. Of course the another downside to the 2.0 upgrade is the wait for developers to upgrade the apps for Jailbroken 1.x to run on 2.0.

While 2.0 offers better location tracking in Google Maps, the first-gen iPhone is still relying on mobile networks to calculate its position because it isn't blessed with onboard GPS like the new iPhone 3G. All up there seems little point in upgrading an old iPhone at this stage.

Apple has just released a 2.0.1 update, but I'll wait for the iPhone Dev Team to give the green light before upgrading. So far I'm seeing mixed reports as to whether it addresses the sluggish performance on first-gen iPhones. Meanwhile I think regular reboots and keeping third party apps to a minimum might help my iPhone's performance - but isn't that why I gave Windows Mobile the flick?

My iPhone has an identical twin which also made the long journey from mothership in Cupertino. Safely in the hands of an old friend, the phone is still happily running 1.1.4. I've advised my friend to hold off on the upgrade unless there's something in the official Apps Store that she just can't live without.